Ethical Educational Leadership Research Articles

Ethical Decision-Making in Educational Leadership: Insights from Islamic Scholars

Ethical decision-making in educational leadership is a critical aspect of ensuring effective governance and fostering a positive school climate. Insights drawn from Islamic scholars provide valuable perspectives on moral principles that guide leaders in educational settings. This study explores the ethical considerations and decision-making processes influenced by Islamic teachings among educational leaders. This research aims to investigate how Islamic scholars' insights inform ethical decision-making practices in educational leadership. It seeks to analyze the ethical frameworks advocated by Islamic teachings and their application in contemporary educational contexts. This study employs a literature review approach to examine scholarly articles, books, and Islamic texts that discuss ethical principles relevant to educational leadership. The research focuses on synthesizing and analyzing existing literature to identify key themes, principles, and practices advocated by Islamic scholars in guiding ethical decision-making among school leaders. The findings highlight that Islamic scholars emphasize principles such as justice (adl), compassion (rahma), honesty (sidq), and accountability (mas'uliyyah) as foundational to ethical leadership in education. Ethical decision-making processes are guided by Islamic teachings that prioritize the well-being of stakeholders, fairness in decision outcomes, and adherence to ethical norms. Insights from Islamic scholars offer nuanced perspectives that enrich contemporary discussions on ethical leadership and governance in educational settings

Designing an Ethically-Oriented Management Model for Employee Education Development in Higher Education Using Grounded Theory (Case Study: Free Universities of Mazandaran Province)

Purpose: One of the modern management approaches that has received significant attention and has addressed the weaknesses and problems of traditional management models is ethically-oriented management. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to design an ethically-oriented management model to enhance employee education in higher education, utilizing grounded theory in the free universities of Mazandaran province. Methodology: The nature of this study is exploratory and utilizes qualitative data. The research population consists of management experts and professors with management experience in the free universities of Mazandaran province. The researcher employed the snowball method to achieve theoretical saturation after conducting interviews with 13 experts and opinion leaders. Qualitative data were collected through structured interviews and analyzed using the qualitative method of grounded theory. Findings: Causal factors influencing ethically-oriented management for the development of employee education include personal characteristics, psychological capability, job identity, and organizational communications. Contextual factors include organizational ethics, organizational foundations, organizational justice, and leadership roles. Influential intervening factors include political, executive, infrastructural, and cultural factors. Additionally, three core phenomenon components have been identified and reported: ethical educational leadership skills, ethical literacy, and instructional design. Resulting strategies include external and internal university strategies, formal and informal strategies. Lastly, outcomes include structural development, educational development, communicational development, and performance development. Conclusion: This research began with the aim of achieving an ethically-oriented management model for the development of employee education in higher education using grounded theory and has completed its evolutionary journey through qualitative methods, resulting in a model. Finally, recommendations derived from the researcher's experiences are presented.

Core values of ethical leaders in South African schools

In the research reported on here we explored teachers’ understanding of what they perceived as core values of ethical leadership in education. Using qualitative research within an interpretivist design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with teachers and school management team (SMT) members and analysed using Tesch’s coding method. The theoretical underpinnings of the paper are grounded in 3 distinct ethics of care, justice and critique. The findings cannot be generalised since the results highlighted in this article only report on those applicable to this small qualitative sample. The main themes that emerged from the findings included the participants’ understanding of 3 core values of ethical leadership. They emphasised trust, respect and transparency as vital components of ethical leadership. Recommendations include more training and research for secondary school teachers who are not well equipped with the knowledge, skills and tools to approach the needs of disenfranchised and disadvantaged learners at their schools. A more nuanced understanding of transparency in schools, policy and practices is needed.

Ethical Leadership in Education: A Uniting View Through Ethics of Care, Justice, Critique, and Heartful Education

Several studies have suggested that the implementation of ethical leadership can lead to improved job satisfaction, enhanced emotional commitment, and prevent employees from burnout. This article investigates the concept of ethical leadership and its repercussions on the field of education through a uniting perspective. This study proposes a review of the ethical leadership literature focusing on three paradigms: ethics of care, justice, and critique which we are linking to the concept of heartful education as helping tools for administrators, faculty, students, and families alike. The goals of this article are to (a) obtain a concept of ethical educational leadership; (b) to explore a relationship between ethical educational leadership and heartful education; (c) to adopt a uniting view on ethical educational leadership; (d) to investigate the roles of educational leaders through the ethics or care, justice, and critique; (e) to review previous ethical educational leadership studies (f) to obtain a series of conclusions on the implementation of this type of leadership on the field of education.

The Contribution of Ethical Leadership in Promoting the Educational and Learning Process in Greece

The present work aims to approach the characteristics of ethical leadership and to detect the practices applied by the principals of secondary schools to support socially vulnerable groups. In this context, school leaders express views on the structure and "nature" of leadership, and in particular on ethical leadership. At the same time, emphasis is placed on capturing the implementation of actions for the educational support of the specific groups of the population as well as on the existing structure of the Greek educational system that operates restrictively for the undertaking of initiatives by them. It investigates whether the positive influences of ethical administration are not limited to the level of school units. In addition, the work seeks to identify the current problems that principals face in the performance of their duties. The analysis of the data from the 43 semi-structured interviews reveals important facts about the importance of ethical educational leadership and the benefits it can offer to the entire student population and to the operation of the school. In particular, the application of ethical leadership creates the right conditions to improve the learning performance of students, contributes positively to the socialization of vulnerable groups and finally creates a positive educational climate.

Faith and Learning in Action in Ethical Leadership

This study addressed how to use service learning (SL) as a means of faith integration (FI) in a doctoral course on ethical leadership. Based on my 20 years of teaching experience in the field of education, my perception has been that graduate students sometimes complete their degree with a greater emphasis on self-actualization than on serving others. One emphasis of the ethical leadership course that was the context for this study was how to respond to ethical dilemmas through considering the viewpoint of others. Two research questions guided the study: First, how can SL and FI be implemented in a course on ethical leadership in education? Second, how can serving others through faith and learning in action influence the understanding of ethical leadership in doctoral candidates? A scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) methodology was implemented in this study. This methodological approach aims to promote course improvement by using student assessments, faculty and student reflections, and/or quantitative data to determine the effectiveness of teaching and learning strategies. The intended outcome of SoTL is for others to use the research findings to improve course construction and student learning within their own academic contexts. The findings of this study indicated that implementing SL activities and FI into the course strengthened students’ application of ethical leadership by having them consider the viewpoint of others. Faculty members teaching courses in ethical leadership and other related courses at Christian universities might be well advised to create SL opportunities to help promote faith and learning.

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION AND ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION MANAGEMENT ETHICS

This study relied on examining the relevant literature, and researchers’ opinion on ethical leadership in education and its relation to education management ethics, as management ethics is defined as a behavior rules of the school principals in management activities in day to day bases, taking into consideration that school teachers and principals are obliged to obey to the rules and regulation with regards to culture and tradition of what’s good and what’s bad in line with ethics principles, considering schools’ principals are honest and fair in their behavior, and everyone in the school should be treated equally. Ethical leadership is characterized with ethics values in the management function as to decision making, behavioral ethics, communication, coordination, leading, planning and organizing, thus the ethical values that ethical leadership have in playing a leadership role also play a great role in the institutions, and the values that education principals have are determined by determining educational policies and philosophy, trying to implement these policies through oriented programs, selecting, developing and evaluating staff, rational use of resources, creating a healthy school culture. Article visualizations:

Ethical leadership in education and its relation to ethical decision-making

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate ethical leadership in the context of the Arab educational system in Israel. It questions the relations of ethical leadership dimensions with decision making as well as background characteristics of the educational leaders. Design/methodology/approach Arab educational leaders (n=150) from diverse Arab schools responded to valid research tool of 40 items constructed of six subscales: three ethical leadership dimensions (critique, justice and care) and three leadership work aspects (ethical sensitivity, climate and decision making). Averages were calculated for each subscale. Findings Significant relations were found among ethical leadership dimensions and decision making, the leaders’ school type and their seniority. Research limitations/implications This study is based on research in diverse countries, using a common conceptual frame. Its limitation is the sample’s narrow scope. Practical implications The study results may inform the developing ethical qualities in educational leadership. Originality/value The authors recommend widening the scope of the sample examined to further clarify the concept of ethical leadership and its implications to the practice of educational leadership.

Book review: Handbook of Ethical Educational Leadership

Book review: Handbook of Ethical Educational Leadership

Films for a New DEEL: Documentary Films in the Educational Leadership Classroom

The discourse on the use of film in the educational leadership classroom is often limited to the viewing of Hollywood features or industry films created for training purposes. We were motivated by an interest in finding new, valuable curriculum material and mediums that can inform and transform the work of education administrators. Guiding the selection of films is the vision of leadership as defined by the New DEEL (Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership) and the multiple ethical paradigms (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2005). This article discusses five documentary films for use with educational leaders to enhance course curricula.

Introducing human rights education in the Confucian society of Taiwan: its implications for ethical leadership in education

In March 2000, Chen Shui-Bian, the candidate representing the Democratic Progress Party (DPP), won the 10th presidential election. This ended the one-party rule by Kuomintang (KMT) for five decades on the island of Taiwan. The new government soon announced a new policy to include human rights education in the education system. However, the concept of human rights was originated in the Western culture of individualism, and is not widely understood in Confucian settings. This paper compares the concept of morality in Western individualism with that of Confucian ethics for ordinary people, and discusses implications for ethical leadership in education. Findings from empirical research are then used to review the use of corporal punishment in the education system of Taiwan. Finally, the possible consequences of introducing human rights education with regard to ethical leadership are discussed with reference to experience elsewhere.